Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-11-14
MORAL SUICIDE.
A Sermon on Behalf of Young Men by
New. w. O. Merrill

me congregational Church, preached q
sermon on behalf of young men.
He chose for his text. Proverbs viii:36
p" He that sinneth against me, wrongeth his
own SOUL Beginning with a prelude on
the relations of sensational journalism to
family life, he said: We hear great deal
in these days about realistic novels, and
the taste for uncleanness, that has been for
few years past asSiduously cultivated by
open police trials, and the reporters hired
by majority of our daily press to dress
up vulgarity and vice in flashy garments,
with surroundings just alluring enough to
absorb the attention and excite the curios-
lty OF youth, without arousing positive dis
gust and rebellion. In this way has been
graduated a school of story writers who
are seeking to help on the love for this sort
OF thing by adding
VIVID IMAGINATION
To the sufficiently disgusting facts of daily
life. Zolaism in the daily newspaper is as
much worse than Zolaism in the French
novel as living in an infected house is more
dangerous than passing yellow flag on the
opposite side of the street. | thank God
that some few of our daily journals are
rising to the responsibility that rests upon
them as the most powerful educators of the
day. | marvel when learn that so many
parents are willing to lay before the eyes of
their children, day after day, papers that
are known to be pledged to all manner of
license, and which dress up vice in flaming
garb, to catch the unwary and excite the
morbid curiosity of youth-not for the sake
OF curtailiDg crime and making vice odious,
out to sell papers and augment their rev.
enues. 1t is a sin that must be atoned for
at the judgment bar, that so many parents
are the first to present corrupting thoughts
to their children through the medium of
disreputable press. We have
CLEAN JosRNALs
That report crime briefly for information,
and not for the cultivation of diseased
imagination. 1t may be that our homes
will not be purified of journalistic unclean-
ness, set free from this worse than Egyp-
tan darkness, until there be first born
slain in every house" / have no hesita-
ton in saying that the man who allows a
paper with unclean utterances entrance to
his house, and sets it before the ewes of
his wife and children, is ten-fold worse
than the man who elaborates that same
vileness to satisfy the demand of careless
and morbidly curious public. If man
must have the latest kilograms, let him
gather them, and throw the unhalloyed
sheet into the gutter ere he crosses his
threshold to receive the kiss of welcome
home from the pure lips of wife and chill
dren. If our social system is
ROTTEN AT THE HEART,
We need not thrust beneath the ewes of
youth the fostering sores upon the surface.
Let fifty or even twenty advertisers in an
unclean journal draw their pen across an
obnnviorc ,clo
the editors desk and there would be con-
version in that Office as much more marked
than that of Paul on the road to Damas-
Gus as the average flash journalist is lower
than the violent and mnrderous agent of
the Jewish Sanhedrin. We are wise al
most to inspiration in inveighing against
the detailing of vice, and prophesying the
coming of a better day; we are blind al
most to stupidity when it comes to the ap
plication of quick and simple remedy for
this deep and fatal disease. Garbage in
your cellars is harmless in comparison to
the garbage in your drawing rooms aud
parlors. You can clean out the cellar and
whiten its walls, but blunted conscience
AND TAINTED MORAL MATURE
You cannot soon restore to their ma
tive purity. Men with drunken sons
and unfilial daughters whine about the
corruptors of the times What times?
Are they not our own times? Are they
not of our own making? Our fathers ate
sour grapes and their children's teeth are
set on edge. 1t Is only half true, and if
true it is no argument that we should eat
sour grapes and set our children's teeth on
edge. Pure reading in our children's
homes; how many Christian parents in
this city can honestly say they have it and
nothing else? There is period in the
life OF youth when the acquisitive faculties
predominant, and Judgment is too weak
and uniformed to assist itself The youth
cares not what the knowledge is but he
wants the knowledge. The mind Graves
and devours all that comes beneath the
eye in its eagerness for acquisition. Time
was when this could only be met by
books, and the parent could guide the rest
less mind by selection of the right material.
4 book OF two or three hundred pages is
now thrown twice daily at our doors in the
shape of
DAILY NEWSPAPER
How natural for the young mind, craving
something ever new in information, ON
niverous in its appetite, to fill itself with
the flash sensatiOnalism of lean and I'M
principled reporters, who find vice profita-
bic in proportion to their power to make
the story of it interesting. How natural,
too, that minds fed upon such pabulum
should learn to look coldly upon vice with
out shudder; to come slowly to that con-
diiion where the sensational alone is of
especial interest; to become restless when
fact is net sufficiently startling to satisfy
the appetite, drop the daily newspaper for
the Police Gazette, and crowd fancy with all
unholy thoughts and images. The laws of
thought and sensation are memorable. The
father throws down the paper that his
trained mind has voted worthless. careless
of the tact that his children will feed upon
what he has glanced at and cast aside.
Where vice has been made familiar to the
youthful mind the door has actually been
opened for the practice of vice. All oyer
the world to-day mothers are praying and
ministers are pleading for the salvation of
young men. In this brief prelude | have
sought to lay upon the hearts of parents a
responsibility for
EARLY EDUCATION.